A recombinant Mycobacterium smegmatis-based surface display system for developing the T cell-based COVID-19 vaccine

<p>The immune escape mutations of SARS-CoV-2 variants emerged frequently, posing a new challenge to weaken the protective efficacy of current vaccines. Thus, the development of novel SARS-CoV-2 vaccines is of great significance for future epidemic prevention and control. We herein reported constructing the attenuated <em>Mycobacterium smegmatis</em> (<em>M. smegmatis</em>) as a bacterial surface display system to carry the spike (S) and nucleocapsid (N) of SARS-CoV-2. To mimic the native localization on the surface of viral particles, the S or N antigen was fused with truncated PE_PGRS33 protein, which is a transportation component onto the cell wall of <em>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</em> (<em>M.tb</em>). The sub-cellular fraction analysis demonstrated that S or N protein was exactly expressed onto the surface (cell wall) of the recombinant <em>M. smegmatis</em>. After the immunization of the <em>M. smegmatis</em>-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate in mice, S or N antigen-specific T cell immune responses were effectively elicited, and the subsets of central memory CD4+ T cells and CD8+ T cells were significantly induced. Further analysis showed that there were some potential cross-reactive CTL epitopes between SARS-CoV-2 and <em>M.smegmatis</em>. Overall, our data provided insights that <em>M. smegmatis</em>-based bacterial surface display system could be a suitable vector for developing T cell-based vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 and other infectious diseases.</p>